Re: Fedora Freedom and linux-libre

On Tue, 2008-06-17 at 07:47 -0500, Les Mikesell wrote:
> As the rest of the sentence continues to say "then this License, and its
> terms, do not apply to those sections" I think you are one being
> misleading here. There is some room for disagreement on the
> separateness but not about whether aggregations are permitted when those
> specified conditions are met.
>
> Here's the whole thing in context since you seem to be incapable of
> finding it in the thousands of COPYING files you must have:
>
> "If identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Program,
> and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in
> themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those
> sections when you distribute them as separate works."
That part is a simple statement of copyright law. as a prelude to what
comes next. As it says, the GPL doesn't even _apply_ to those parts when
you distribute them separately. How could it? The GPL only operates by
giving you back permissions which copyright law took from you -- and the
GPL _cannot_ apply to those parts, when you distribute them as separate
works.
But you seem to have 'accidentally' cut out the next sentence of the
same paragraph:
"...as separate works. But when you
distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based
on the Program, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of
this License, whose permissions for other licensees extend to the
entire whole, and thus to each and every part regardless of who wrote
it."
Or are you trying to make the incredible claim that in fact, the
firmware embedded somewhere in a bzImage file -- where we can't even
find it to extract it -- _is_ being distributed as a separate work,
rather than as a part of a whole which is based on the kernel?
If so, you would have to be _very_ deluded. That's almost as silly as
the 'but we _like_ to use hex editors on our kernel, so we _are_
providing it in the preferred form for modification' defence. :)
--
dwmw2